A thorough investigation found that more than
one of Mortenson’s inspirational tales about building schools in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, primarily to educate girls, were exaggerations or outright
fabrication.

Over 4 million readers purchased Three Cups of Tea and countless
charitable souls (including many children in the Pennies for Peace program)
contributed millions toward Mortenson’s cause, which unfortunately was more
graft than humanitarianism.

The 1,000-page novel Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts provides an eerily similar ego trip. Both books are written by the slyest of
white male hustlers, seducers who take advantage of their reader’s quest to
find a beautiful spirit in the world.

The seduction of Shantaram begins with the back cover biography of Gregory David
Roberts: “Sentenced to nineteen years in prison for a series of armed
robberies, he escaped and spent ten of his fugitive years in Bombay--where he
established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a
counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier for the Bombay mafia.”

This enticing resume forms the fictional plot
of Shantaram, yet Roberts’ true
character is revealed between the lines. The author’s photograph on the back
cover gives a hint of what the text subtly exposes: Roberts gazes with eyes like a Rasputin-inspired hypnotist.

The events of Shantaram took place in the 1980s; the book was crafted in the 1990s
(when Roberts was arrested and returned to jail) and published in the 2000s. Roberts’
writes very well, with a great pace to his story, a lightning read for a thick
tome.

The city of Mumbai is the star of the book. The
characters, neighborhoods, and motivations that surround the central fugitive character,
Lin (aka David Roberts), are drawn with insight and genuine detail.

As honestly as Lin narrates the life around
him, he is doubly dishonest about his own persona. The subtlest of spin
transforms Lin from a selfish drug user/dealer, armed robber, bully, hustler
and materialist, into the perception of a sensitive humanitarian, all under the
banner of “fiction.” This is the most insidious
form of egomania.

Propaganda of David Gregory Roberts is the
only fiction of the story.

The title of “Shantaram,” or “blessed man of
peace,” is bestowed upon Lin during a long visit to his close friend Probaker’s
Maharashtrian village. In the prisons of Australia and India, Lin stabs men and
brutally beats them, yet they never die. Lin’s Mumbai mafia cohorts kill people
frequently in the name of business and honor, yet Lin is mysteriously exempt
from any murders. When Lin joins the holy war in Afghanistan, he never mentions
that he is fighting for the Taliban. Like Greg Mortenson’s myths of Afghan
village convalescence and Taliban abduction, something does not add up amidst
the flow of euphemism.

Lin seemingly develops a very close friendship
with a man named Probaker while visiting his village, working as a
pseudo-doctor in the Mumbai slum, and exploring the city together. Yet Lin
suddenly drops Probaker’s friendship and an ascetic life for the “honor” and
money of the mafia, although he repeatedly repudiates any materialist desires. Lin
cites Arthur Road prison trauma rather than pure selfishness for the change of
heart. When the abandoned Probaker later dies from car accident injuries, Lin is cocky enough to blame himself,
assert God-like control of fate: “If I had not given him the gift of a taxi, he
might still be alive.”

Like Mortenson, Roberts lathers his own attractiveness with more
exaggerations: Lin saves the lives of numerous
heroin addicts; Lin solves all acquaintances’ problems in the expatriate bar
and the Mumbai slum; Lin smuggles a bear out of the shantytown; Lin never
fails.

But even Roberts’ real-life prison sentence
does not add up honorably: He was sentenced for nineteen years for armed
robbery in Australia and served two. He was arrested again for drug smuggling
in Germany, negotiated extradition to Australia, and only served six more years.
He is now a free man living in Malibu, California, thanks to Johnny Depp’s two
million dollar movie option for Shantaram.

At every step of life and written page, Roberts’
hustle is on. Enjoy the Mumbai insight of Shantaram,
yet beware of the insidious seduction.

Lee Miller is the author of the Bengali novel, Kali Sunset
(www.clovercreekpress.com).